Vicente Bistro Cranks Out The Croissants – Charlotte Magazine

Sam Chappelle and Yerman Carrasquero have come a long way in search of the perfect croissant.

For the uninitiated (or anyone who doesn’t binge The Great British Baking Show), croissants are laminated, meaning cold butter is rolled between layers of dough, folded, rolled again, folded, and rolled again to create a buttery package that can be shaped and filled (or not). Finally, it’s baked until the heat of the oven teases the browned edges of the layers apart like pages in an ancient book, and the whole thing lifts a little closer to heaven. 

“Do what you know,” Chappelle says. “That’s our model—do something no one else can do.” 

Both in their early 30s, Chappelle and Carrasquero followed a path from California to Argentina to Boston. It took them from careers in statistics (Chappelle) and accounting (Carrasquero) to the land of pastry, coffee, and sighs of satisfaction. They finally landed in Charlotte, where they opened their bakery, Vicente Bistro, last June on South Boulevard.

Chappelle grew up in a family that moved a lot, including stays in England and Chicago. His parents were both in computer science, and neither liked to cook. By middle school, Chappelle had taken over the kitchen. It didn’t take him long to discover he loved to bake. “I’m a picky eater,” he admits. “I hate cheese. I hate creamy, savory things.” He was good in math, so he got a degree in statistics but found he didn’t like that, either. “I got paid more for less work, but I can’t sit at a desk all day.”

Chappelle went off to the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley to get a degree in pastry. An internship took him to Argentina, where he worked in catering for embassies. That’s not as much fun as it sounds in a culture where parties start late and go until 7 or 8 a.m. He moved to Mendoza, Argentina’s wine region. Along the way, he met Carrasquero, an accountant who had fled his native Venezuela, where inflation is as high as 800%. 

“It’s impossible,” Chappelle says. “You can’t plan for the future. You can’t live.” 

Yerman (it’s pronounced several ways in Venezuela, including Herman, but he prefers “YEAR-man”) is still working on his English, so Chappelle tells their story. While Chappelle does the baking, Carrasquero does the books and handles the customers. He’s the smiling man in black glasses who tucks your croissants into boxes. 

Chappelle and Carrasquero fell in love, living in an apartment on Avenida Vicente Lopez in Buenos Aires during the quarantine. When they could travel again, they moved to Boston, which was very expensive and very cold. 

“(Yerman) thought he liked snow,” Chappelle jokes. But he’d only seen pictures of it. 

They could have gone anywhere from there—Chappelle speaks multiple languages—but no place was the right fit: “The whole world is crazy right now.” They considered Miami, but Carrasquero was afraid he wouldn’t learn English in a place with so many Latinos. Napa? 

“It’s always on fire.” 

It finally came down to Charleston, which seemed too staid, or Charlotte. Chappelle’s parents had briefly tried retirement and bought a house in Salisbury. (“It was a little too Southern for them,” Chappelle says. They live in Atlanta now.) Chappelle and Carrasquero were hesitant about the South, given its history. But they visited Charlotte and were surprised: “It’s big and clean, and the people are nice.”

Chappelle worked at a few restaurants while they looked for a location for their own bakery. They passed on five before finding a sunny space with big windows in the Selene at Southline Apartments near Remount Road. 

Chappelle wanted lots of light—many restaurant kitchens have no windows. But he discovered too late that that was a problem. Their floor-to-ceiling windows face east, and in the mornings, those windows act like magnifying glasses. Butter for croissants needs to stay cold. Chappelle adapted, putting his math and science brain to work to come up with a method that lets him cut the butter in two pieces so it can be rolled and folded more quickly. 

People who love croissants have found them quickly, too. On weekends, they sell between 1,000 and 1,400. Customers come from as far as Ballantyne and Kannapolis to South End to empty Vicente’s glass case of croissants—plain, almond, chocolate, ham and cheese, even dulce de leche. The last is filled with brown caramel thick enough to leave tooth marks when you bite it, which shatters the crust and showers pastry flakes down your shirt. Throw in kouign-amanns, layered French pastries with a cap of caramelized sugar; a few specialties, like Venezuelan sticky buns called golfeados; and breakfast sandwiches. That’s pretty much the whole menu. 

Good thing the menu is tight: Chappelle is the only baker, with a single helper. He’s had one day off since June, and Carrasquero has had “maybe two.” While the bistro closes at 2 p.m., Chappelle works until 6, then comes back at 8 or 10 p.m. to get pastries proofing overnight, then again at 4 or 5 a.m. to start baking. 

For now, they have no plans to expand, although they’ll add outside tables when it warms up. With six employees, plus Chappelle and Carrasquero, it’s all they can do to keep up. “It’s been more work than I expected,” Chappelle admits. “Weekends are crazier than I expected, and weekdays are slower. There’s only so much you can crank out.”

Kathleen Purvis is a longtime Charlotte writer who covers Southern food and culture.